


Living Lies

by merryghoul



Category: Homecoming (TV 2018)
Genre: Drabble Collection, Drabble Sequence, F/F, Memory Loss, Season/Series 02, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:53:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24429043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merryghoul/pseuds/merryghoul
Summary: Alex and Audrey, after the Geist Group.
Relationships: Audrey Temple/Jackie | Alex (Homecoming TV)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9
Collections: femslashficlets: queer women's literature quotes challenge





	1. wanting to save her

**Author's Note:**

> Set after the second season.
> 
> For some reason (I guess spoiler-related ones?) IMDB doesn’t use the two names for Jackie as seen in the show, but Wikipedia does show both names, if anyone is wondering. I used the name Audrey uses for Jackie for my drabbles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #14, full quote: I knew that I couldn't lie beside her, without wanting to touch her. I couldn't have felt her breath upon my mouth, without wanting to kiss her. And I couldn't have kissed her, without wanting to save her. | Sarah Waters, _Fingersmith_

Alex waited in the aftermath of that disastrous party at the headquarters of the Geist Group. She thought she knew who she was. Then she met Audrey. And she called her Alex.

Alex couldn’t remember anything she did with Geist. She felt what she did, if she did anything, was bad. Alex let Audrey drink out of the camp mugs handed out at the party because Audrey must’ve done something bad at Geist as well.

Alex waited because if she and Audrey knew each other before this fateful day, maybe they could recreate their relationship without the Geist Group part.


	2. Our bones ache only while the flesh is on them

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt 4: Our bones ache only while the flesh is on them. | Djuna Barnes, _Nightwood_

People started waking up in the Geist Group building. Audrey didn’t wake up immediately. Alex didn’t want the people doing anything to Audrey as they woke up. Alex hoisted Audrey up on her arms and led her up the Geist Group stairs.

Alex waited upstairs in the darkness with Audrey. She still had her taser; she gripped it tight in her right hand, ready to shock anyone who came close to them. 

Alex fought an urge to sleep while she waited for Audrey to wake. Alex wouldn’t sleep until she knew Audrey was okay and safe from the Geist Group.


	3. autopsy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #3: You have come to do an autopsy and at the first excision found a beating heart. | R. Erica Doyle, _Proxy_

Audrey woke up last in the Geist Group building. No one ventured to get near Alex and Audrey’s hiding space on one of the building’s upper floors. 

Audrey blinked her eyes. “Alex?”

Alex slumped to the floor, attempting to fight off her drowsiness.

Audrey looked around. "Where is this place?"

"I don’t know." Alex yawned. "But my name’s Jackie."

"Let’s get out of here.” Audrey didn’t have time to correct Alex. This time Audrey put Alex on her arms. The two of them started walking down a hall in the Geist Group building, halls they both knew the other day.


	4. Stand and face me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #6: Stand and face me, my love, and scatter the grace in your eyes. | Sappho

Audrey stopped at a door marked with her name on it. Curious, she opened the door.

Inside was an office with the usual office things—books, stationary and the like. A box sat on the office’s desk. A photo of Alex, affixed by tape, hung inside the office. The photograph didn’t startle Alex, since she knew Audrey knew her from somewhere. It felt like her body felt the same way as well.

“We should grab whatever we can take to my car. Maybe I can find a key,” Audrey said.

The two put documents and the photo in the box.


	5. who can call you home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #9: But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name. | Jeanette Winterson, _Oranges are Not the Only Fruit_

Audrey held the box. Alex held out the car remote for Audrey’s car, found in what they believed was Audrey’s office in something called the Geist Group. They found their way to the parking deck after numerous dead ends, dead ends caused by forgetting the layout of the building.

The two did find Audrey’s car, after Alex nearly wore down the car’s remote clicking at the remaining cars in the parking lot.

Audrey placed the box in the car’s trunk. The two sat in the front seats of their car. 

“We have to drive until we find home,” Audrey said.


	6. fearing the yes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #10: We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings. | Audre Lorde, _Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power_

Something inside Audrey helped her find a road far away from the Geist Group building. From there she kept driving. In silence, of course, because Alex believed she was Jackie Calico, and it was hard to talk to Alex when she didn’t know who she was. 

Audrey turned down the wrong streets a few times. Hours later, she did find her way back to the home she shared with Jackie.

“We’re home, Alex,” Audrey said, forgetting for a moment about Alex’s extreme memory loss.

“This is not my house,” Alex said.

“I’ll help you remember this has been your home.”


	7. I tell you this to break your heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #15: I tell you this / to break your heart, / by which I mean only / that it break open and never close again | Mary Oliver, “Lead”

Calico waited for Alex and Audrey at the door of their house. When Calico approached Alex, she backed up. She almost ran out of her house but Audrey grabbed Alex’s hand before she could run somewhere in their neighborhood.

“I did warn you not to name one of your aliases after our cat,” Audrey said. “It’s going to be confusing around here for a while.”

“I have aliases?”

“Yes.”

“I go by many names?”

“You were a crisis manager. And you never wanted anyone to know your real name.”

“Why?”

“I guess you knew what you were doing was bad.”


	8. the whispering thing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #12: the moonlight striped her, marked out places where the whispering thing would slip through and she would unfold. | Helen Oyeyemi, _White is for Witching_

Alex found her way to what appeared to be an office in what she was told was her home. What she found behind the door of this home office stunned her. Lanyards hung around the office. Papers were organized in folders. Alex turned on a computer and played around with the applications on it. She opened up Adobe Photoshop and saw some projects made by an “Alex.” Everything she saw had her face on it, but there were different names on some of the documents.

“This is what I used to do?” Alex asked Audrey, stunned. 

“Yes, Alex,” she nodded.


	9. overwhelming

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #2: The realization of great mutual love can at times be so overwhelming a thing, that even the bravest of hearts may grow fearful. | Radclyffe Hall, _The Well of Loneliness_

Alex couldn’t sleep. She stared up at the ceiling in her bed. Audrey sleeping beside her made sense to her before she lost her memory, but it didn’t make sense now. She lost most of the affection she had for Audrey after her botched attack.

“I hate feeling like this,” Alex said, hoping to wake Audrey up.

“I hate it, too. You used to hold my hand when we were in bed.”

“I did?”

“You did.”

“Could you help me figure out who I was?”

Audrey grabbed Alex’s hand. “Of course I will.”

Alex looked at Audrey while falling asleep.


	10. a conversation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #7: That conversation we were always on the edge / of having, runs on in my head. | Adrienne Rich, _Twenty-One Love Poems_

The thing about looking for artifacts on Alex’s life meant Alex and Audrey were in danger of pulling up things related to the Geist Group. Audrey didn’t want either of them to remember the bad things they did there. There was a reason why the two of them were meant to forget about Geist.

The two did find remnants of Alex’s life. Things Alex bought Audrey on dates they shared together. Vacations they took together. Pictures of young Alex and pictures of graduations Alex had. If the two of them found anything Geist Group-related, maybe the two unintentionally missed them.


	11. like rain in the desert

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #1: I feel I stand in a desert with my hands outstretched, and you are raining down upon me. | Patricia Highsmith, _The Price of Salt_

Alex, Audrey, and Calico decided to fly to the Midwest, where Alex was from. Audrey thought it was a great idea for the two of them to visit Alex’s family again. The visit might jog some of Alex’s memories, or maybe create new, and false, ones. And Alex’s family would be happy to see her again.

Alex hadn’t been on an airplane in a while. Alex’s joy at the most tedious parts of airport check-ins—checking bags, security, waiting to board the plane—quietly delighted Audrey. But she didn’t tell Alex about her joy because she thought that was weird.


	12. possession

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #11: I want to possess you completely— / Your jade body /And your promised heart. | Wu Tsao

It hit Alex sometime after her trip to see her relatives, back when she was at home with Audrey and Calico. Alex watched TV. Audrey fretted in secret about how the two would make money without a job.

Some time ago, Alex went to a pet food store to buy dry cat food for Calico. She remembered calling Audrey from the cat food store. 

Alex sat on the couch in shock. She didn’t think she would ever remember who she was again, but she did. She adored her cat she named Calico. And she was always in love with Audrey.


	13. weak with want

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #8: when she looks at me / i float in a warm lake / feel my muscles go weak with want | Pat Parker, “My Lover Is a Woman”

Alex ran into the kitchen. “What was the last thing I said to you before I forgot who I was?” 

“You told me that you fucked up. I remember thinking you were okay in that place. You clearly weren’t.”

“But I’m okay now.” Alex hugged Audrey. 

“No kiss?”

“Not yet, Audrey. I don’t feel brave enough.”

Audrey sighed. “We need money. We can’t keep putting everything on credit cards or our credit will go bad. I’d go back to work, but I’m overqualified for everything that doesn’t need a resume, and qualified while lacking a resume.”

“I’ll think of something.”


	14. the longing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #13: The border is longing; when both have fallen in love but still haven’t said anything. | Tove Jansson

Alex believed she needed to be her old self, in a way, so the two could sustain their old lifestyle. Audrey agreed.

Alex forged a lot of documents. She created fake exams and fake resumes. She bought plastic for a laminator to make new identification cards. She used her photoshop program to make photo forgeries. She managed to create fake contacts in case people needed to check her contacts out.

They weren’t with Geist Group again. They couldn’t work there ever again. But Alex was a fixer again. And Audrey was a secretary. Things almost felt normal again between them.


	15. the kiss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt 5: Then they took the last step together, and when she kissed her, her mouth as warm as summer, the taste of her sweet and clear, she knew, at last, that she was home. | Malinda Lo, _Ash_

Alex held Audrey’s hand again before they went back to bed. 

Audrey missed Alex holding her hand. It was Alex’s way of showing she always had affection for Audrey without always speaking it in words. 

Alex missed holding Audrey’s hand. She missed what falling in love and caring for someone felt like. The very thing she created her business around almost took her from who she truly loved. She was fortunate enough to use her abilities to get it back.

Grasping Audrey’s hand tight, Alex leaned in and kissed her. For the first time in awhile, she finally felt alive.


End file.
